Soapbox – Ussher Press Daily

This Neat Trick Could Make You $200,000

Want to make $200,000? It’s simple:

1. Create some grey goopey substance as a meal replacement.

2. Try it out for a few months.

3. Don’t get ill or weak because of it. (Pro-tip: It helps if you’re 24 years old and in relatively good shape to begin with!)

4. Crowd-fund your idea and make $200,000.

5. Call it “Soylent” in a non-ironic way. (Extra, freebie pro-tip: don’t make it green and definitely do not make it out of people.)

That’s all it takes, folks. You can read more about this crazy idea in my previous blog post, Soylent Snake Oil.

Soylent Snake Oil

Have you read about this? A 24-year old man got tired of having to make meals and, unbelievably, eat. (Who the hell hates to eat?) Instead of learning to cook some nice meals for himself and learn to enjoy the experience of eating like the rest of the human race, he decided to spend his time coming up with a goopey meal replacement. After a few months of experimentation with said meal replacement, he felt pretty good health-wise. Based on that, he figured it was time to hit the Big Time and turn this into a commercial endeavor.

From Soylent Corporation:

What if you never had to worry about food again?

For many people, on many occasions, food is a hassle, especially when trying to eat well. Suppose we had a default meal that was the nutritional equivalent of water: cheap, healthy, convenient and ubiquitous. Soylent will be personalized for different body types and customizable based on individual goals. It allows one to enjoy the health benefits of a well balanced diet with less effort and cost.

There are so many things wrong with this.

First of all, none of the people on the team are nutritionists or have a background in medicine. In fact, the guy who started the whole thing has a background in electrical engineering and computer science. He started this whole experiment just a few months ago. He is not an expert in nutrition. I also don’t see any references on their page about consultation with any experts. Does this not scare anyone?

Secondly, the original copy on the page included the following (it has since been removed):

Soylent is perfectly balanced and optimized for your body and lifestyle, meaning it automatically puts you at an optimal weight, makes you feel full, and improves your focus and cognition.

Extraordinary claims, no? How exactly is it “perfectly balanced and optimized” for anyone’s body and lifestyle? What’s in it exactly? As far as I know, it’s only been tested on one guy for a few months. How do they know it will “automatically” put me at an optimal weight and make me feel full? And how the hell will it improve my focus and cognition?

Perhaps the Soylent boys should team up with Kevin Trudeau?

The testimonials found in the section entitled “What the early adopters are saying” are laughable. Who are these people? Wouldn’t it have been better to include medical trials and scientific data showing that this works? I’m sorry, but subjective testimonials don’t cut it when it comes to things that will be ingested.

Finally, take a look at “The Team”. It consists of four young guys, two who are in charge of marketing and sales. Shouldn’t they have more people dedicated to testing these theories out?

Someone on Hacker News put it best:

This is pure hubris! This idea has been pursued for decades by people who have dedicated themselves to scientific rigour.

I’ll say it again. The founders of Soylent have Engineer’s Disease. They think because they’re engineers they’re experts in food science. That’s delusional.

As far as I know, a sample size of ONE GUY is not enough to conclude that something works. If the original experimenter wanted to do things right, he should’ve consulted with experts, done a ton of science, tested it out a bunch of times, gotten his ideas peer-reviewed, and THEN gone to market with it. But no, it’s 2013, why not just come up with an idea, write a blog about your “experimentation”, and then immediately take it to market with some crowdsourcing scheme.

There’s just something wrong about a bunch of tech people thinking that because they’re good at software development and they’re smart, they can take those skills and apply them to any other field.

Let’s be honest. Software development is trivial to get into. You just need a laptop and the internet. That’s it. You can download all the tools you need. Most of it is free. If there’s knowledge you need, just go online and Google it. Go to StackerOverflow.com and get answers to any questions you have there. Want to write an iPhone app? Tons of examples online. Want to write a cloud-based service? No problem. That does NOT translate to other fields, like medicine or nutrition.

I hope this fails. Miserably.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Level of Realism

I saw The Hobbit earlier today, so here are my quick thoughts on it.

I watched the 3D version at 48 frames per second. The high frame rate was amazing. In my opinion, this is the future of film.

Yes, in the initial few minutes I was worried that it looked too much like a “soap opera” and not like a traditional film. However, a short while later I let go and really got into it.

The high frame rate meant that the image was crisp and clear. There was no motion blur. It made it feel more real and immersive. Many moments felt like a play. It felt like I was peering into a real live event from my seat. I’ve never seen high def look so good.

I can understand how people are railing against this because it really does feel strange to watch film this way, but I think it’s the direction we should be moving. Being used to 24fps is just a cultural artifact. People generally don’t like change, so it may be hard to move them towards higher frame rates. In my opinion, once you let go, it really works as an experience.

Regarding the story itself, I won’t say too much other than I enjoyed it. Even though the film was nearly three hours long, it was paced just right. There wasn’t a single time I wanted to look at my watch or thought about wanting it to end soon. In fact, I wanted it to go for as long as possible. It was very immersive.

I read the book over 20 years ago as a child, so I didn’t remember the story. I will say that where they chose to end the film worked. My fears that it wouldn’t have a proper story arc were allayed. It felt like it had a beginning, a middle, and an ending. It did leave you wanting more, so it works.

I recommend that people with an open mind who want to see the future of cinema, see this film in 3D at a high frame rate. Let yourself be lost in the film and the realism.

Cyber Monday: The success of a forced meme

Cyber Monday is a marketing term/event invented in 2005 by Shop.org, an association of online retainers. Over the years, the association has continued to promote the idea, and now, in 2011, it seems to have finally hit critical mass.

Watching the growth of this idea over the years is a fascinating look into how a “forced meme” can be constructed and spread, with the help of news media, in particular. (For some historical context, read some of the posts on slashdot back in 2005.)

If you think about it, before that press release, nobody had heard of Cyber Monday. Then, one press release later, an idea is born. Give it a catchy name, an easy-to-tell story and some questionable statistics and it becomes newsworthy enough to be worth covering. And, because it is issued by an association of retailers, i.e. a big organization that has money and makes money, it automatically becomes important. (Can you imagine a random individual issuing a press release, or even Occupy Wall Street issuing such a thing and having the news media cover it at all? When people or groups with money speak, we listen.)

Another important thing is to repeat the press release each year, and update the statistics, which surely will go up and be “record-breaking” each subsequent year if you start out small enough, and you’ve got yourself an idea that’s got wings. “Record-breaking” is such an easy term to exploit.

Now, ask yourself, how did you come to “learn” about Cyber Monday? Did your neighbor tell you about it? Did a coworker mention to you about some great deals they found? Most likely not. Most likely you heard about it on the news, in the guise of ‘helpful tips’ to get ‘the most’ out of ‘Cyber Monday’.

If you do a quick search on YouTube for Cyber Monday, you’ll see all sorts of news media coverage of how much money it’s going to bring in for online retailers (that’s “newsworthy” because it affects the economy, stupid), or tips on how to find great deals and not be done in by fake websites. (“Cyber Monday” and “fake” in the same sentence? I shudder to think.) My personal favorite is the one from CBS which features a “personal finance” contributor outright telling you which websites to visit for deals. Is this news?

It’s fascinating how effective it is to simply presume something to be true, and instead of researching its validity, pointedly discuss issues surrounding it. Not unlike asking your friends what they will be buying your imaginary friend for her birthday this year, asking your mother what her thoughts are on the latest teen sensation, Fakey Mcgee, or presenting a plan to rid your foe of weapons of mass destruction, treating something to be true and

Chalk up another one for the marketers. As Goebbels said, “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.”

Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field Lives On

There’s a story going around about how a 1-year old just can’t figure out a magazine, despite being able to work out how to use an iPad: 1-Year-Old Plays With Magazine Like It’s An iPad.

What’s amazing about this story is people gushing about how this further shows Steve Jobs’ genius or how he has “coded a part of [this child]’s OS” (comments on mashable, above). Wow, how amazing is the iPad that it’s easier to understand for a baby than a physical magazine?

This is ridiculous. Let’s stop and think for a minute. Children do not know very much about the physical world. If you give them an iPad and they play with it, they “learn” that touching the screen makes things move. Give them a magazine, of course, they’re going to think they can move the pictures around. They are experimenting and trying to learn how things work.

Surely, if you gave this baby a magazine first and one day gave them an iPad, it would seem odd to them that they can do things on an iPad they can’t do on a magazine. This has nothing to do with the intuitiveness of an iPad versus a magazine, or how magazines are somehow inferior, or how Jobs was a genius.

Seriously, yes, Steve Jobs was an amazing influence on computing and Apple makes great things, but enough with the gushing, as if you’ve just discovered you’re related to him and you need to share his genius with the world.